9 July 2012

On Monday 4th of June I broke my
collar bone. I was cycling to work in the morning as usual when I hit an obstacle and flew through the air over the handlebars. I landed on my left
shoulder and rolled a little on the hard tarmac.

In the heat of the moment I
thought I'd come out of it pretty well, a few cuts and bruises but I didn't
imagine I'd broken anything. But a check up at the hospital revealed that my
left collar bone was in fact broken.

The hospital sent me home with
strapping around my shoulders and instructions not to do any sport or lift
things. Four weeks of immobilisation lay before me.

I could do almost
nothing. I had to rely on my family to run the house and even to wash me and
tie my shoe laces. I had a go at playing guitar but quickly discovered how
important a well-anchored shoulder is to playing. I had to resign myself to
give up on guitar too.

It was a frustrating time, not
playing guitar and not doing anything else all day was hard for me. But I found
three musical activities that kept me working on my guitar skills and helped to
sooth my frustrations.

1. Pick Out Melodies on a Piano

Right after my accident my right
hand fingertips were pretty cut up and sore. But with my middle finger that had
escaped without harm I could pick out little melodies on my son's piano.

I'd recently watched a film about
Woodstock because my daughter studied it for a school project. So I tried to
pick out Hendrix's star spangled banner that I'd seen Hendrix play by ear.

I
don't think I actually got it right, but I had fun trying and I'm sure I
learned in the process so I'll be a bit better next time I try to pick out a
melody by ear.

2. Strumming and Picking Exercises

After a few days I thought to
myself that I could work on my picking hand, I didn't need to move my left arm
for that.

So I propped my guitar on my lap
and worked on some strumming and picking exercises with my right hand. I did
all that with open or muted strings and left my left arm in peace.

3. Playing Ukulele

About 10 days after my accident I
caught sight of a ukulele in one of our cupboards. I immediately thought that I
might be able to play its very short neck without moving my left arm about.

I was right, and I spent a happy
hour strumming away songs on it. I repeated the experience regularly during the
following weeks.

A couple of days ago I had a
check up and my collar bone is healing nicely. I still can't hold my guitar
strap over my shoulder, but I can start to play the guitar a bit again.

I'm thankful for that. But I'm
also thankful that my experience taught me that no matter how improbable or
difficult it seems, no matter what obstacles there are, I can always find a way
to learn and develop my musical and guitar playing skills.

Sorry to hear about your accident. I was researching on better ways to improve my posture while playing guitar because of a sore rotator cuff and realize that you did it with much worse. One thing I feel helps alot is to play in a more comfortable chair and take breaks after every few songs.

Just broke mine (left one) today...the day before I move to France! I mostly play bass guitar...but have been learning the Bach cello suites on a ukulele tuned like a viola--so I was VERY happy to read about your success with the uke!

Update on my own case: Pretty much back to normal now, and it never (after about two weeks) really interfered with my bass playing as long as I was careful not to put any weight on the left arm (meaning sit down to play instead of using the strap).